Tuesday, July 24, 2012

San Diego Comic Con 2012

My first ComicCon experience was about 3 years ago- when I was still working for Sony. I didn't have any agendas or personal goals- Thank to John Hight and Kevin Brown for generous offer- I got on Amtrak from Downtown LA to San Diego and I remember it was a quite enjoyable train ride. This time I was supposed to check it out and see who I can meet on artists alley but I remember seeing huge crowds so I just picked up a couple graphic T-shirts and I didn't want to stay much longer. It was super quick and easy. This year, I went down there with Justin Yun (my business Partner) and we set up a booth with LAAFA (Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art) -LAAFA was generous enough to let us share their booth.Thanks Holly! I was down there for 3 nights and 4 days. Justin had to stay all 5 days..that's just crazy..As for us being business owners (Section studios) our first year of running business together- we wanted to check out all the conventions- that are related to visual art, entertainment industry. So far we have been to CTNx (Burbank), Wondercon (Anaheim), GDC (SF) and E3 (LA). Each expos and conventions have different characteristics and demographics, we learned that it is important to being out there and mingle with industry pros and also potential buyers/Investors of our services and products.

It turns out to be- ComicCon is one of the best places to promote your own projects and ideas. Not like GDC or E3- where most of exhibitors are big companies, ComicCon felt more geared towards to single artists and various small vendors. We sold a good amount of prints and Section art booklets- enough to cover most of our business expenses- but more importantly I was able to talk to many friends and other professional artists about our business and our own project. I've met some of my old students that are working hard in industry, reunion with classmates from Artcenter and Orange Coast College and even bar hopping with our current clients.. It's definitely clear reflection of American pop-culture and solid proof of how positive future we have in this industry by seeing a wide age range of attendees soaking up creative energy and having good time in beautiful SD. They say what-like 200k people came? that's almost more than twice of E3....good times.